President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) approval rating dropped by about 5 percentage points over the past month, while the number of people dissatisfied with him rose by some 6.2 percentage points over the past month, a survey released yesterday by the Chinese-language Global Views magazine found.
The survey, conducted by the magazine’s polling center between last Tuesday and Thursday, surveyed a total of 1,005 adults nationwide.
The survey found that 35.5 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with Ma’s performance, while 52.3 percent were not.
Up to 45.2 percent of respondents said they trusted Ma, while 39.1 percent said they did not.
The number of those who did not trust Ma rose by 1.1 percentage points compared with a similar poll last month.
Meanwhile, 77.2 percent of the respondents said they believed China should stop blocking Taiwan from taking part in international affairs before the two sides of the Taiwan Strait could build mutual confidence, while 71.8 percent said China should remove its ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan.
Also, 67.2 percent of respondents said China should first push for democratization and protect freedom of speech,while 51.4 percent said China should sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Taiwan first.
More than half of those polled (57.8 percent) believe the leaders of Taiwan and China should establish a direct communication channel while 48.3 percent said the two presidents should not meet unless China removes its missiles beforehand.
Sixty-three percent said they knew the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party had recently held a cross-strait forum, but a majority of them said they did not know the agenda.
More than half (64 percent) said the Democratic Progressive Party should enhance exchanges with China to protect the interests of Taiwanese, but 22.3 percent of the respondents disagreed.
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